Woe is me. I’m am horribly, ridiculous far from fitness. No, I’m not sandbagging here… I’m in the worst shape I’ve been in 19 years. Fortunately, for your entertainment, a good friend has offered me his raffle spot in next year’s Western States and I’m without a valid qualifier. The resultant pain and, for those prone to schadenfreude, entertainment will commence at 8 am Mountain Daylight Time Saturday morning on the shores of northwest Montana’s Hungry Horse Reservoir at the Le Grizz 50 Mile. The one and only goal? Cross the finish line under my own power in less than 11 hours. I’ve yet to do the math, but I ran a total of 70-75 miles per month in July and August, didn’t do much more in September, and haven’t run further than 8.5 miles in three months. Oh, this will be “interesting” for all of us.

For your entertainment, I’ve created a separate Twitter account @LanterneOrange so you can follow along (if and when I have cell coverage) without me spamming iRunFar’s Twitter account. Feel free to encourage and/or heckle me there.

I’ll also be wearing a SPOT device, so you can follow me if there’s no cell coverage. The full SPOT Adventure page is here, but I’ve embedded a small version of the map below. [Neither of these should display any data until shortly before the race.]

Congrats, Bryon! I also have a WS qualifier but it's a helluva lot slower. I'm gonna downshift to the BP 70-mile per month training plan and see how that works. Maybe then I'll even have time for other things! Super-impressive.